REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF., SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We were told
that water-boarding was not being used. The CIA was misleading the
Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Course corrections from the president...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I fear the publication of these photos
may only have a chilling effect on future investigations of detainee
abuse.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... and a P.R. blitz from the former V.P.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: We'd successfully defended
the nation for 7 1/2 years. I believe it was possible because of the
policies we had in place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is Cheney right? Is Pelosi in trouble? Are
Obama's choices making us more safe?

That debate, this morning, with two key senators, Republican whip
Jon Kyl and Democrat Jim Webb. Plus, an expanded powerhouse
roundtable with George Will, Democratic strategist James Carville,
John McCain's campaign manager Steve Schmidt, Katrina Vanden Heuvel of
the "Nation," and the former State Department official now joining her
father on the front lines, Liz Cheney -- and, as always, the Sunday
funnies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY LENO, HOST OF "THE TONIGHT SHOW": She spent eight years
telling everyone how dumb President Bush is and then, the minute
you're trouble, "He fooled me!"

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: From the heart of the nation's capital, "This Week,"
with ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos,
live from the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue.
STEPHANOPOULOS (on camera): Hello again. It has been a week
full of accusations, confrontation, recalibration and new calls for
investigation here in Washington -- just another week.

And with apologies for that burst of rhyme, we welcome our
headliners to this morning's debate, Democratic Senator Jim Webb of
Virginia and the Senate's Republican whip, Jon Kyl of Arizona.

Gentlemen, welcome to you both. And there is so much to talk
about this week. But let's start with that war of words between
speaker Pelosi and the CIA. She says the CIA lied about these 2002
briefings. Leon Panetta came out on Friday, said, no, they told the
truth.

And former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has weighed in,
saying that this is despicable behavior, take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWT GINGRICH (R), FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: I think she has lied to
the House and I think that the House has an absolute obligation to
open an inquiry. And I hope there will be a resolution to investigate
her. And I think this is a big deal.

I don't think the speaker of the house can lie to the country on
national security matters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Kyl, how big a deal is this and how
should it be investigated?

KYL: Well, it is a big deal, obviously. She is the speaker.
And at that time she was the ranking member of the Intelligence
Committee. And she was one of four people who got the briefings. And
it is pretty clear that Leon Panetta, her former colleague in the
House from California, now CIA director, totally disagrees with her
recollection of events.

Let's give her the benefit of the doubt and say she doesn't
remember, although that's a pretty important thing not remember
accurately.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So does it need to be investigated?

KYL: I am less interested in investigating whether her memory or
correct or she lied about it than I am in the policies that flow from
the debate that we're having. I am not one who thinks we ought to
have truth commissions and all of the rest of it and keep looking
backward. I agree with the president. We've got enough on our plate,
we need to look forward.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's the irony here, Senator Webb, as Speaker
Gingrich says, investigate. He wants a separate House investigation.
Speaker Pelosi says, fine, let's have a truth commission, the one that
Senator Kyl doesn't want. Where do you stand on this?
WEBB: I just don't think it's that big a deal. I mean, I think
we have selective memories...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... is not a big deal?

WEBB: Well, I mean, they're going to have a fight. But in terms
of where the country is right now, where we need to go, there are a
lot of issues of accountability in terms of looking back as to the
conduct of the past administration in a number of areas.

But really, in terms of what we need to be focusing on, let's
accept that torture is inappropriate behavior. And I've interrogated
hundreds of detainees and enemy combatants when I was a Marine in
Vietnam, torture doesn't work.

Let's all accept that, separate it from these other issues that
we're talking about in terms of having to resolve issues, like
Guantanamo, and move forward.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, no truth commission?

WEBB: I think this will resolve itself without something like
that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's move on to some of the other issues,
because President Obama this week did make two significant shifts on
national security policy. He said that the photos of that detainee
abuse would not be released, he would fight that in court.

And he also shifted on the issue of military tribunals, even
though he had been for them in the past, he heavily criticized the
Bush tribunals, now he is bringing them back with some reforms.

And let me show you some of the human rights groups' reaction to
these moves by President Obama. The ACLU says: "These military
commissions are inherently illegitimate, unconstitutional, incapable
of delivering outcomes we can trust."

Human Rights First: "Reinventing commissions so deeply associated
with Guantanamo Bay will merely add to the erosion of international
confidence in American justice and provide more fodder for America's
enemies."

Now you were also against the commissions during your campaign.
Do you support what the president is doing here?

WEBB: I wasn't against commissions per se. I think that -- my
view on...

STEPHANOPOULOS: I don't know -- well, let me just interrupt you
there, because I have an AP story from April 2007 where you said -- it
says that you told reporters that detainees should either be declared
prisoners of war or charged in the American judicial system.

"We can't just continue to hold people in limbo without charges
for this period of time and still call ourselves Americans."

WEBB: If I said charged in the American judicial system, I would
mean under the traditions of the rules of evidence and these sorts of
things. But my view has always been that we need to move these people
forward.

We need to find those people who should be held accountable and
hold them accountable. And people who have been held inappropriately
should be released.

But I don't believe that the situation with people in Guantanamo,
as opposed to others who have conducted activities in the United
States are the same. I think that the people who have been held in
Guantanamo are being charged essentially for acts of international
terror, for acts of war, and they don't belong in judicial system, and
they don't belong in our jails.

STEPHANOPOULOS: This is what the commissions...

WEBB: And I don't believe -- I do, I do. But with this caveat,
we need commissions like this because there are issues of evidence
that you cannot take care of inside the regular American court system,
classified information that might have an impact on how we collect
intelligence and those sorts of things.

And there are facilities built in Guantanamo right now that are
able to do that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Agreement here?

KYL: Yes. I agree. There are some people that you try, very
few, some more that you try in the military commissions, and we've
always had military commissions of one kind or another.

Some that you can't because of the evidence and other factors
try, and if they are the equivalent of prisoners of war, in this case,
enemy combatants, you can hold them until the end of the war that
you're in.

And then, of course, there are those who, on an annual review,
you decide can be released. Unfortunately a lot of those that we have
released because we thought they no longer posed a danger, have come
back to the battlefield and have fought us.

But the president has made some changes in the military
commissions to give these people some additional rights, and perhaps
that helps to balance the situation. Congress, after all, passed the
Military Commissions Act.

This would liberalize it to some extent. We'll have to wait and
see whether it liberalizes it so much that they don't work anymore.
But I'm happy to see how they work out.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You laid out nicely the various groups of
detainees that the president has to deal with, which, of course,
brings us to the question of, what to do with those detainees once
Guantanamo is closed, as the president has called for.

I know this is creating a lot of controversy in the Senate
because of the possibility that some of these detainees may have to
come to the United States.

And the attorney general, Eric Holder, was asked about this at
the Senate this week, and he said very clearly that no dangerous
detainees will be released in the United States.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I don't know, whatever quantum of
proof, however you want to describe it, to believe that a person posed
a danger to the United States, we will do all that we can to ensure
that that person remains detained and does not become a danger to the
American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: And is that enough assurance for you, Senator
Kyl?

KYL: Well, understand that we've already released those who,
after careful examination, we thought didn't pose a danger. And the
number is somewhere between 30 and 60 who turned out to continue to
conduct their activities against us after they were released.

The remaining 240 or so do pose a danger. So there aren't any
left that can easily be released because they don't pose a danger.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, that's not exactly true, right? And I
want to bring Senator Webb in on this, because I know there are about
17, I believe, Chinese Uighurs, they are called, who have been ordered
released by a federal court, they've determined not to be a threat to
the United States.

And the administration has been working on plans to bring them to
Virginia. Can you accept them in your state?

WEBB: Well, let me back up for a minute. The answer is no.

STEPHANOPOULOS: No?

WEBB: No. And I'll -- and then let me explain why. But to back
it up, the numbers that we've seen in my office are about 800 people
have gone through Guantanamo.

The majority of those who have been released, we're down to 220
to 240, so the majority of those that have been released have been
released to third countries, not actually released out into the open
-- you know, to where they can...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Just let out the door, right.

WEBB: Yes, right. So we don't know really where they have gone.
This other group deserves due process. They deserve, in the right
kind of environment, and I support what the president is doing on the
military commissions, to have their cases examined, to see whether or
not they should continue to be detained.

The situation with the Chinese Uighurs that you're talking about,
on the one hand, it can be argued that they were simply conducting
dissident activities against the government of China.

On the other, they accepted training from al Qaeda and as a
result they have taken part in terrorism. I don't believe they should
come to the United States.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Not to the United States and not Virginia.

WEBB: No, I don't believe so.

KYL: No, I totally agree.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How about this, there is also the group that
might have to be brought to the United States for trial or to be
detained here. And the Republicans in the Senate have put out
legislation -- not introduced legislation that says no detainee should
be brought to the United States in any way unless the state
legislature and the governor of the state passes -- signs off on that.

One, do you have the votes to pass it? And, two, will you block
any funding for the closing of Guantanamo without those assurances?

KYL: That was a motion by House Republicans. We're taking up
the bill next week. There will be an amendment that would preclude --
it would similar to that, but perhaps not identical.

A similar resolution passed a couple of years ago 93-4 saying,
don't bring these detainees to the United States. And my guess is
that none of this supplemental funding will be allowed to relocate
detainees into the United States, that that amendment will be adopted.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Will you support that? Because you support...

WEBB: We spend hundreds of millions of dollars building an
appropriate facility with all security precautions in Guantanamo to
try these cases. There are cases against international law.

These aren't people who were in the United States, committing a
crime in the United States. These are people who were brought to
Guantanamo for international terrorism. I do not believe they should
be tried in the United States.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Yet back in January, you supported the
president's decision to close Guantanamo.

WEBB: I think Guantanamo has become the great Rorschach test of
how we feel about international terrorism. We should, at the right
time, close Guantanamo. But I don't think that it should be closed,
and in terms of transferring people here.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, but I -- I just want to press this one
more time, because, actually, in January, on January 23rd, you said
the president has given a reasonable timeline here in sorting this
out. You no believe it's reasonable?

WEBB: Well, no, I don't, actually. You know, having sat down
with my staff and gone through the numbers in detail, and looking at,
you know, the facilities that have been built there, and coming to the
point where I have to, you know, personally weigh in on this in a
detailed way, I think what we're doing is the right way.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you will not support funding for closing down
Guantanamo?

WEBB: We should close down Guantanamo at the right time. I
think what has happened is Guantanamo has become the issue rather than
how we process these people who were detained there.

Let's process them the right rules of law, the right due process,
within the constraints of how we have to handle these cases, with
military intelligence and that sort of thing, but the facility is
there at Guantanamo to do it. And then close it down.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So the January deadline should be relaxed. The
president should not meet that January deadline. You don't believe
Guantanamo...

(CROSSTALK)

WEBB: I think we should -- you know, I think we should defer to
the judgment of the administration who is looking at this. I think we
all are moving toward the right direction. But we shouldn't be
creating artificial timelines.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the administration said January.

WEBB: They've said a lot of things and taken a look and said
some other things. So let's process these people in a very careful
way and then take care of it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me come back to you, Senator Kyl.
Yesterday, President Obama appointed the Republican governor of Utah,
Jon Huntsman, to be ambassador of China.

A high profile governor, he had been looking at a presidential
run. Are you disappointed that he took this job?

KYL: No. He's a very capable guy. He speaks Mandarin Chinese.
He had a post in Singapore similar to this in the past. He is very
experienced. He is knowledgeable about trade issues. And I think
it's great to have a highly qualified person like that.

And to the fact that the president reached out to appoint a
Republican is a good thing. I'm not at all disappointed. It's, I
think, good for the United States.

WEBB: I'm chairman of the East Asia Subcommittee on the Foreign
Relations Committee, I'm happy to take a look at his qualifications.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Webb, Senator Kyl, thank you both very
much for your time this morning.

Straight to the roundtable now. So as our panelists take their
seats, take a look at Robert Gibbs from Friday's press briefing,
showing just a little bit of exasperation after a week of taking a lot
of heat from both sides.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: You started out on
Monday wondering why we were being so opposite of George Bush in all
of these questions. And on Friday, I'm answering questions about, why
are we so much like George Bush on all of these questions?

I'll let you guys discern what inflection point -- what period of
days that all changed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, we'll let the round table discern what
period of day that all changed.

Let me bring them all in right now. I've got George Will as
always, former State Department official Liz Cheney, Steve Schmidt,
John McCain's former campaign manager, James Carville, Democratic
strategist, also the author of "40 More Years, How the Democrats Will
Rule the Next Generation". Making George Will laugh. And Katrina
Vanden Heuvel of "The Nation" magazine.

George, let's begin with the decisions President Obama made this
week. He decided not to allow the release of these photos of detainee
abuse. He decided to reinstitute military commissions. You saw there
a lot of human rights groups upset. Jim Webb apparently not all that
upset as a Democrat. How significant are these shifts and are they
the right moves?

GEORGE WILL, COLUMNIST: Well, they come after he essentially
affirmed warrantless wiretapping and escalated in Afghanistan. So you
can see why a certain faction of the Democratic Party is unhappy.

On the other hand, he has changed his mind on the photographs,
but he's changed his mind by keeping a promise. The promise he made
during the campaign was I will always consult with my commanders. He
consulted with the commanders who said among other things, the 10 days
after the Abu Ghraib photos were released, there was a spike of
violence in Iraq. They strongly urged him not to release these and he
won't.

Now there is a court involved in this and the court has so far
said that under the Freedom of Information Act, they have to be
released. He can appeal that, he can lose, and he can then say I did
my best and the photos come out.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That good enough?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, "THE NATION": Obama was elected in part
to correct the illegal shameful policies of these last eight years.
I'm interested in the military commission's decision. Because he
sided ...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you support him on the photos?

VANDEN HEUVEL: I don't. And I think they will come out and I
think Obama could've set a clean break by saying we will never allow
these policies to happen again. They should be released to a
commission. That's what I think he should have said if he wanted to
elide the full disclosure. But on the military commissions, he sided
with the military over his Justice Department, which weighed in and
said that the federal courts have a long and good tradition of
safeguarding the government's national legitimate interests as well as
safeguarding intelligence information and the due process of suspects.

I think that it was a mistake. And I think what he's done,
President Obama, is made it harder for some of his supporters to
support him. And he will need them. He will need them in the fights
ahead. And he can't -- my final point, he cannot evade any longer the
need for full true transparency and accountability. The momentum for
a commission, a nonpartisan independent commission is so powerful at
this stage.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I'm not sure that's true. If you heard those
senators today ...

VANDEN HEUVEL: Well, we're not just inside the Beltway, George.
I think there is interest in this country as more and more comes out
if he's going to pursue what he wants to pursue in terms of his
agenda.

LIZ CHENEY, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, I would imagine
listening to Katrina that you would agree, then, that the president
ought to declassified the memos the vice president's asked for, so the
American people can see the effectiveness of this program. And I
think the president deserves some credit for coming to the right place
on military commissions and on the photos. But I do think it gives
the American people some pause to sort of have watched the stops and
starts here. The president on Guantanamo second day in office
announces it's going to be closed before I think he had a real
understanding and a handle on what the alternatives would be and how
difficult it would be.

And with the pictures, I think also, you saw again, an
announcement they would be released, and then having to walk that
back, and even an admission, frankly, that he hadn't looked at the
pictures before announcing they'd be released. And I think on issues
that have to do with national security and war and peace, the American
people would like to see a little bit more consistency in terms of
their commander-in-chief.

STEPHANOPOULOS: George, the White House is obviously sensitive
this charge on flip-flopping, but does it matter if you're going to
end up in a place where you are going to get a lot of support?

JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: First of all if you say
my generals said I shouldn't release, it would cause a spike and the
president says, OK, I won't release it. I think as George pointed
out, that was something he said during the campaign. We would be
awfully uncomfortable as Democrats if he were releasing these pictures
tomorrow and it was these things that General Petraeus and Secretary
Gates and the new commander coming into Afghanistan, General
McChrystal, would've said let's don't do this.
So let me tell you, as a Democrat I'm very happy that he decided
to listen to his commanders. And it may very well be that as it winds
its way through the courts the courts will release them anyway. I
don't know.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, and maybe part of the calculation
is they are going to come out eventually. But we're at a critical
time in Iraq now as troops are moving out of the cities, we're heading
towards elections. And Afghanistan, the timing here did matter.

CARVILLE: It did. And again, you would not want to be president
and have the secretary of defense and your top commanders come back
and say we advise against doing this. That would make me
uncomfortable and I'm a pretty good Democrat.

CHENEY: Those same people advised against doing it before the
White House publicly announced they would release the photos. It's a
little disingenuous to say he made the decision based on what the
military commander ...

VANDEN HEUVEL: But it's also buying the military argument --
It's buying the military argument that the release of these photos
will increase violence. These photos, Guantanamo, Bagram, that has
been the cause for anti-Americanism and our actions, our policies in
escalating in Afghanistan.

CARVILLE: I agree with you. We became infatuated with torture.
We should've never done that. However, and the reason you have these
photographs is because they exist. Having said all of that, if these
generals come in and you're the president and he says -- they say you
shouldn't do it right now.

VANDEN HEUVEL: You don't envy ...

CARVILLE: I don't envy the decision, but I'm more comfortable as
a Democrat with him making this decision than another decision.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Steve, he's also facing, we saw with the senator
as well today, some more controversy over Guantanamo. And this was
the next big political controversy that's going to be coming down the
pike for the president. He said he wants Guantanamo to close,
Democrats in the House say they're not going to fund it. And now
appears the Democrats in the Senate are going to say exactly the same
thing and what you've got above all is a huge consensus developing in
the Senate that no one wants a detainee in their own state.

SCHMIDT: Well, there are a lot of very dangerous people
committed to kill Americans that are housed at Guantanamo Bay. It was
a very irresponsible decision to announce the closing of the
Guantanamo Bay prison before he had any idea where the detainees there
were going to go.

The decision he made this week was the right decision. Katrina
said he bought the military story. When an American military
commander says you're going to get soldiers killed if you release
these photos, commander in chief made the prudent decision, he made
the right decision, and he deserves credit for it here.

More and more, though, you see over this course of his young
presidency him adopting policies that he criticized on the campaign,
because now he's in the real world. He's leading our country and we
are a nation at war. And he is making decisions, thankfully, that are
responsible with regard to the security of the country and the lives
of our men and women.

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of the things you see is the president is
pretty unsentimental about it. He's showing unsentimentality. He's
also showing great flexibility, which is, you know, useful in a
president, but he is getting criticism on this Guantanamo issue for
not giving his own party cover. I mean, he's got his secretary of
defense saying we're going to have to bring some of them into the
States. He's got his attorney general saying we're not going to let
any dangerous people into the States, but we might have to allow some
detainees here, yet he's been relatively silent.

WILL: Well, you know, the supermax prisons in our country are
full of Americans who have killed Americans and are perfectly safe.
So the idea that we can't find a place to house these very few people
who are really dangerous strikes me as preposterous.

And I don't think the country minds it when a president changes
his mind. It indicates that he's looking at the evidence.

(CROSSTALK)

VANDEN HEUVEL: I agree with George on the supermax. But you
said, George, that the next big controversy is Guantanamo. The next
big controversy is the mounting evidence showing that torture was used
to extract evidence to create a link, a false link between Saddam
Hussein and Al Qaida. That is a crucial area of investigation and
anther reason...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me just explain to the viewer what Katrina
is talking about, a little more context on what she's talking about.

There were some reports this week that the vice president's
office actually back in 2003, in April of 2003, I believe, sent some
sort of word to Iraq that a detainee in custody should be waterboarded
in order to get information to establish whether there was a
connection between Iraq and Al Qaida, or more information on weapons
of mass destruction. Your response.

CHENEY: Well, two things. It's easy to sit here inside the
Beltway and say gosh, no problem to put terrorists in Colorado. And I
think, frankly, the people in Colorado would have something to say to
that to object.

On this particular allegation, you know, nobody who is talking
about this in the press has any knowledge of specific detainee
treatment. And you saw the CIA yesterday come out and say absolutely
unequivocally waterboarding was not used to establish this kind of a
link.

VANDEN HEUVEL: I have not seen...

CHENEY: Well, you should...

(CROSSTALK)

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: But I want to press one thing there, because
there was a report -- no, but you explained one part of it. I just
want to ask you to explain another part of it. The report, though,
that the vice president's office did ask specifically to have
information about Iraq-Al Qaida connections presented to this
detainee, do you deny that?

CHENEY: I think that it's important for us to have all the facts
out. And the first and more important fact is that the vice president
has been absolutely clear that he supported this program, this was an
important program, it saved American lives.

Now, the way this policy worked internally was once the policy
was determined and decided, the CIA, you know, made the judgments
about how each individual detainee would be treated. And the vice
president would not substitute his own judgment for the
professionals...

STEPHANOPOULOS: No one in his office either?

CHENEY: ... at the CIA. So I think it's very important for us
to look at exactly what the facts are. And the facts are that three
people were waterboarded. The people that, you know, claimed to have
been waterboarded in these articles are not any of those people. And
I think, frankly, you've also got to look at the source of some of
these allegations, and one of the big sources is Colonel Wilkerson.
Now, Colonel Wilkerson gets coverage because of his associations with
General Powell.

STEPHANOPOULOS: His former chief of staff.

CHENEY: And has made a cottage industry of out, you know,
fantasies about the vice president...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, he's not the only one reporting it, but
it's good to get your answer.

We're going to have to take a break right now. This roundtable's
going to continue after the break. The Pelosi-CIA showdown. Who will
win? How much trouble is the speaker in?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: We'll be right back with the roundtable and the
"Sunday Funnies."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Madam Speaker, just to be clear, you're accusing the
CIA of lying to you in September of 2002.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER: Yes, misleading the Congress
of the United States, misleading the Congress of the United States.

Everything that I received, we were not told that -- in fact, we
were told that waterboarding was not being used.

No, I wasn't -- I was informed that a briefing had taken place.
Now, you have to look at what they briefed those members. I was not
briefed that. I was only informed that they were briefed but I did
not get the briefing.

So, yes, I am saying that they are misleading -- that the CIA was
misleading the Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi under fire but not
backing down one bit in her Thursday press conference. Let me bring
our roundtable back in to talk about it. George Will, Liz Cheney,
Steve Schmidt, James Carville and Katrina Vanden Heuvel.

And, George, I love the way that Dan Balz of The Washington Post
analyzed this. He said: Her performance -- "The speaker's
performance in the Capitol was either a calculated escalation of a
long-running feud with the Bush administration or a reckless act by a
politician whose word has been called into question."

WILL: The Bush administration is gone and people addicted to
attacking it really have to get over that. Her charges are so shrill,
so specific, and so grave that they turn something that was arguably
advisable, a truth commission, into something that's becoming
mandatory to find out whether or not we can trust the CIA. That's a
very serious charge she made.

CARVILLE: You know, seven years ago, the CIA says something.
She says -- and she and Senator Graham and Senator Rockefeller say
something. I just -- I don't think that Democrats really want to be
at war with the CIA. We had that, you know, before and that's not
particularly productive.

I think that she and the CIA director should sit down and they
should as best as we can determine this is what happened. It was
seven years ago. I'm a little bit like Senator Webb. I mean, we
could...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But then why go the extra step and say they
lied?

CARVILLE: Well, you know what -- and I love the speaker, she's a
great family lady and everything else, I probably wouldn't have done
that, OK?

(LAUGHTER)

CARVILLE: I just -- you know what I mean? It raises to the
level of some kind of a -- "she has got to resign" or this or that.
No, I probably -- if I would have been there I would have probably
said, look, I have a very different recollection or something along
those lines.

This is something that happened seven years ago. There's some
support that they didn't tell us. There is some support that they did
tell her. But she and Leon Panetta are from the same part of the
country, they're from the same political party. It seems to me that
somebody could sit down and say, this is our version of it or whatever
and we need to get a better way to do this.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it doesn't look like the Republican Party is
going to let that happen.

SCHMIDT: No, look, I think if you watch that news conference, I
mean, she couldn't have looked worse, totally not credible. I think
what's totally exposed here is her partisan witch hunt against former
Bush administration officials.

And while I disagree with some of the policies, particularly with
regard to waterboarding, sincerely the vice president and others
sincerely believe these were the policies necessary to keep this
country safe, which was kept safe for seven-and-a-half years.
And I think the ludicrousness of we're going to try to prosecute,
we're going to try to haul people before congressional committees. I
mean, you look at the committee hearings on the auto companies, it's
inconceivable to me what the circus looks like when we start to
investigate the intelligence agencies in a time of war.

VANDEN HEUVEL: Hey, guys, this is about truth and torture.
Illegal, immoral, wrong torture. This is not a political football
game. I'm not here to absolve or condemn Nancy Pelosi. I'm saying we
need to use this time to get to the truth of what a party in power in
2002, with all of the power in the world did in terms of briefings,
insufficient, incomplete briefings on a range of issues, WMDs, 9/11
Commission, Iraq.

We need to use that. We need to declassify the briefings
material and not cherry-pick as your father, Liz, wishes to do, is
releasing...

CHENEY: My father doesn't wish to cherry-pick -- no.

VANDEN HEUVEL: He just wants two documents. But we need a truth
commission with General Taguba. That is my proposal. The man who ran
the Abu Ghraib report. Have a military man oversee and have real
power to get to the truth of what we need to do to move forward
responsibly.

Steve, to bury this will tarnish and undermine and subvert the
justice and power of this country...

(CROSSTALK)

CHENEY: Katrina, there is absolutely actually no confusion on
our side of this issue. On our side of this issue, you know, you can
say you agree or you disagree with the policy, but these were policies
that kept the country safe.

The vice president, as an example, has been very clear in saying
absolutely I supported these policies.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, but...

CHENEY: No, but you let her go, George. You've got to let me
finish.

The vice president has been absolutely clear in saying these are
the right policies.

CHENEY: Now the people who seem to be confused are, you know,
the Nancy Pelosis of the world who supported it but then they didn't
support or who were really offended by it but they made no response to
it. So I think it's very important here to be clear about what the
facts are and in fact what happened.

CARVILLE: George, absolutely stunning finding and in line for
four more years where Democracy Corps asked the American people,
sometimes it you want to know an answer, best thing is ask the
question. We said when it comes to national security policy, do you
think President Obama is doing better, worse or about the same as
President George W. Bush? Very fair question. The results were
startling. Fifty percent said President Obama, 25 percent said
President Bush. We're living in a world where twice as many people
think that this administration is doing a better job on the signature
Republican issue. This is somewhat of a -- this represents -- this
is, again ...

CHENEY: It depends which polls you quote. No, but, James, there
is a Rasmussen poll out that that says 58 percent of the American
people polled believe that the release -- I'll show you my polls too
believe that the release of the interrogation memos actually made us
less safe so you can quote a whole range of polls on your question,
James.

CARVILLE: Liz, this is just fact.

CHENEY: That's right. I'm telling you the response here.

CARVILLE: Twice as many people think that this president, on the
question, who is doing a better job of keeping the nation safe, so
what is clearly working is that this, quote, offensive, this talk
radio offensive that somehow or another Obama is keeping us less safe
is blowing up in their face and I'm all for letting the offense go.

CHENEY: I know you've been in the Seychelles but what's going on
in the United States in the last week really bears little resemblance
to what you just said.

CARVILLE: Again, this poll was conducted ...

VANDEN HEUVEL: Last week has been a coordinated campaign ...

CHENEY: Last week is actually the American people saying, wait a
second, we do not want a president who is going to dismantle the
things that kept us safe without studying them and thinking about
them. And when the White House announces they're going to release
pictures then turns the decision around and says, we're not releasing
the pictures that tells you that the American people who are speaking
out are actually having an impact ...

CARVILLE: Can I repeat this ...

WILL: Surely ...

CARVILLE: Fifty percent President Obama ...

CHENEY: In your poll. Which poll, James?

So, James, my poll says 58 percent of the American people
actually believe we're less safe.

STEPHANOPOULOS: George Will in first and then Katrina.

WILL: Surely the point is smaller than this cosmic question
we're talking about our national safety is did the CIA lie to Congress
and if not, is the speaker, the third person in line to be president
of the United States, is she truthful at this point? Now, Senator
McCain was he says briefed on waterboarding and vehemently, his word,
protested. Jane Harman who replaced Nancy Pelosi as ranking Democrat
on the Intelligence Committee says she was briefed and wrote a strong
letter of protest. Let's find out what -- who is telling the truth,
the CIA or the speaker.

CARVILLE: Senator Graham, who takes copious notes, says that he
wasn't as did Senator Rockefeller as did Senator Feinstein. I'm all
for -- it is imminently conceivable that seven years ago people have
two different memories of a meeting. That's not outside the realm of
possibility. But we can -- just like we need to find out if torture
was used to extract confessions to talk about links between al Qaeda
and Saddam Hussein which we know that al Qaeda had nothing to do with
9/11.

CHENEY: Al Qaeda had to do with 9/11 ...

VANDEN HEUVEL: Can this table agree that we need a commission to
investigate -- to investigate the full range of abuse, misuse of
intelligence, in addition, what we've seen over the last week, Liz,
and we may live on different planets is a coordinated campaign to
distract attention from the true architects of a torture campaign
which has made this country less secure, I think that is what millions
of Americans have seen and the polls, which show that President Cheney
who has given interviews ...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Vice president ...

VANDEN HEUVEL: Oh, I'm sorry. I always thought of him as
president. Has given interviews to the compliant media is now 56 GOP
insiders think he's doing damage to the Republican Party. What does
that suggest?

CHENEY: Well, Katrina, I really appreciate your concern for the
Republican Party and I think you and I do live on opposite planets but
I do think that it's the case that the American people, you know, when
President Obama first came into office, he was asked do you agree with
Vice President Cheney's advice that you ought to take a long, hard
look at these policies and at the intel and what we've learned before
you make changes. He said I actually do, I agree with that. Day two,
he comes into office and he doesn't just change the policy but he
releases to the terrorist, to the enemy the list of the techniques
that we used so those techniques are now out there in the legal memos,
they're out there for the terrorists to train to. Then he comes in
and says, listen, we're going to prosecute potentially people who
worked in the Bush administration who worked very hard to keep the
nation safe. Now, in my view that's un-American. That's not
something that's ever happened before in this nation.

SCHMIDT: It's Banana Republicanism is what it is.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But he's pretty much taken that off the table,
the prosecution...

(CROSSTALK)

CHENEY: Yes, but come on, George, to even suggest it, I don't he
has taken it off the table.

SCHMIDT: ... thousands of Americans murdered in Lower Manhattan
and across the country by these attack, anthrax, the belief that more
attacks were imminent.

The public officials in the Bush administration who worked to
keep this country safe, you may disagree with the policy, but to want
to do these prosecutions, to haul people before the congressional
circus up here is nonsense.

And at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the president
made the right decision, in my view, to stop the practice of
waterboarding. There are profound issues facing this country. We
ought to move forward, not look backward. There is an obsession on
the left with get Bush, get Cheney, get Bush administration officials,
the Democrats now run this city and they should leave it in the past.

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to go to the politics just a little bit
because Katrina talked about that National Journal Insiders Poll where
57 percent of Republicans say they don't think it's helpful.

And I know you probably believe what your father is doing is
helpful, obviously. But I want to get Steve as John McCain's former
campaign manager, I know a lot of your former colleagues, Republican
operatives, think it's not that helpful to have a former vice
president coming out this early in this way.
SCHMIDT: It doesn't matter. Dick Cheney will never be on a
ballot again for national office. What you've seen him be able to do,
though, is to put great attention onto an issue and to impact this
issue in a very marked way over the last week.

The party doesn't have a leader right now and the party is not
going to have a leader until we have a nominee. And so there's a lot
of voices in the party and I think he has been a voice in this country
on issues since the late 1960s and he has every right to speak out.

CARVILLE: I don't have a problem. He's the former vice
president. He wants to go out. He can speak all that he wants to,
just like Rush Limbaugh can speaks all that he wants to. There is a
debate in the Republican Party. I think it is a good debate. And the
vice president, Rush Limbaugh -- Rush Limbaugh says we ought to kick
John McCain and Meghan McCain out of the party, good riddance to
Specter. I'm sure it's going to be -- Monday, it's going to be good
riddance to Huntsman.

I think it is healthy for the country for the vice president to
be out there. I'm all for this. I don't have an objection to it at
all.

STEPHANOPOULOS: George, has that brought a smile to your face?

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

WILL: Yes, I'll be you are all...

(LAUGHTER)

WILL: It's campaigning 101 to define your opponent. And your
side thinks it is advantageous to define the opposition party as Dick
Cheney. Pro-Cheney, anti-Cheney, doesn't matter because a rising
generation of new Republicans are coming along and by the time we get
into another election they're going to be the story.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Yet, one new -- one member of that rising
generation, Jon Huntsman, has decided he is going to join Obama's
team.

WILL: Sent to China. And that may be a tribute from the Obama
administration to the political potential in Mr. Huntsman. I don't
know. He also speaks Mandarin Chinese. He would be a good
ambassador.

CHENEY: I would like to say something about the next generation
of Republicans. Look, it seems to me that, you know, our opponents
like to spend a lot of time talking about who is up and who is down.

The future of the Republican Party is going to be built based on
substance. And a key part of that substance is a strong national
defense. And what you see all across the country today, frankly, are
the rise of conservative groups, people who say, I'm not Republican,
I'm not Democratic, but I'm conservative.

And they've got a set of core beliefs, strong national defense,
belief in the Second Amendment, individual liberties, low taxes,
limited government, those are the things that this party has long
stood for and that made America great.

The national security piece of it is one in which the vice
president has, in fact, been very effective in the debate over the
course of the last two weeks, not just in influencing public opinion
but, frankly, in influencing the Obama White House.

So I think, you know, it's great for me to sort of hear James and
Katrina talk about, you know, where they think the party is going. In
fact, I think that the Republican Party has got to stay true to those
core principles. And when it does, I think we'll be back to winning
elections again.

VANDEN HEUVEL: You know, I certainly respect your father's right
to go out and speak to the nation. I think those who disagreed with
that have a kind of royalist mentality, that the vice president should
disappear. I think two of the great speakers of our time have been
Vice President Gore and ex-President Jimmy Carter.

However, what he's doing, it seems to me, is a kind of political
suicide mission for the Republican Party with the Republican Party as
his collateral damage. You talk about an evolving generation. That
generation will find it harder, in my view, if the party is so allied
with a failed and disastrous Bush-Cheney administration.

(CROSSTALK)

VANDEN HEUVEL: But my last point is, I do think there is energy
in the Republican Party in an interesting area, which is
libertarianism. George Will, smile or not, but I do think Ron Paul is
not the right messenger.

But it was surprising that before Obama took off that a lot of
young people found in Ron Paul's message, again, not the right
messenger. But that's where you may see the strength.

On the other hand, the demographic shifts in this country speak
to what Steve Schmidt spoke to when he spoke in defense of gay
marriage and the need for a party to accommodate and be a big tent and
not self-marginalize, which it has done.

(CROSSTALK)

CHENEY: ... give me time to respond to this.

CHENEY: Look, at the end of the day, what the vice president is
doing is not about politics. And it's fascinating and interesting for
all of us who care about politics to make these analyses.

At the end of the day, what he's doing is standing up because he
believes that this country is less safe if we dismantle these
policies, and because he believes it's wrong for an administration to
come in and prosecute...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: ... helping the Republican Party?

CHENEY: Absolutely. No question.

CARVILLE: (inaudible) losing the next generation. And the
generation coming up, the Republicans have all 32 percent of the young
generation. The big problem that the party faces, and that's one of
the reasons I think that people want to, 66-32 voted Obama over McCain
in this election. That was -- even John Kerry carried younger voters.

As these younger voters come to the system, the Republican Party
is going to have to think of a way -- I think that they will -- to
address these voters and these concerns. Right now, they're not doing
it. And, therefore, as a Democrat, I -- I wouldn't -- and it wouldn't
be any good -- but I don't think anything that this vice president is
going to say, maybe he doesn't think is political, but if you're a
former vice president and you attack an incumbent president, it is by
its nature political.

WILL: The secret of the Republican revival are the seeds sown by
Democratic policies -- inflation and all the rest -- and I suggest
that one day, "40 More Years" will be a title as memorable as the book
titled "Dow 36,000."

(LAUGHTER)

CARVILLE: George, you and I won't be here for this.

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Couple of minutes left, and I want to -- as
George is selling your book for you, I want to talk about the
president today. He's going to be going to Notre Dame, facing a lot
of protests on campus, George, from those who say he shouldn't be
honored in this way by a Catholic institution.
WILL: Well, the wrong principle is to say that whenever a
speaker speaks at a university, the university is necessarily
endorsing what he says or what he stands for. No one wants that.

On the other hand, the question is not what Mr. Obama will say
today, but what Notre Dame says by inviting him. It goes against the
guidance issued in 2004 by the bishops, reaffirmed this week by the
protests from Cardinal George of Chicago and Cardinal Dolan of New
York, saying that on a matter this important, on abortion, it is wrong
for a Catholic university to muddy its message, because inviting the
president suggests that the issue is not all that important.

CARVILLE: I think that what -- if it is that important -- and
I'm not the best Catholic in the world, but I consider myself a
Catholic -- what they need to do is get the faculty and make sure,
like say, a constitutional law teacher there that would teach that Roe
v. Wade is settled law, and that person has got to go. I mean, that's
much more of an effect than anything like that.

I also found it interesting that the valedictorian, the young
woman that's going to Harvard, to medical school said that she voted
for Obama, that she was completely -- didn't agree with him on
abortion. But if Notre Dame wants to get serious about this, I think
they can go down and find -- I bet you there are a lot of pro-choice
faculty members that might even be some that are in law school and
find out what these people are doing.

SCHMIDT: As a Catholic, I agree with James completely on this.
It always drove me nuts when President Bush was in office, he was
invited to a commencement speech --and I'll defend the right of anyone
to protest in this country, absolutely on anything -- but I think we
do too much turning our back to each other in this country. He's the
president of the United States. And that's an office that ought to be
treated with respect. The university invited him, and I think he
ought to be able to go and say his piece. And, you know, it's
discouraging to me that you see, you know, time after time, let's turn
our backs on each other, let's walk out of this stuff, and there's too
much of that in this country.

VANDEN HEUVEL: You know, the protesters are more Catholic than
the pope, the Catholic bishops more Catholic than the pope. This is
an unwelcome intrusion of religion into academic life. This is a
moment for people to listen to a president who is a listening
president on the whole issue of abortion. It should be a decision
between a woman, her family and her doctor, not the government.

And I think that there is a hypocrisy here. Where were these
Catholic bishops on Iraq when the pope denounced it, or when George W.
Bush, who presided over more executions as governor and then
president, was invited to speak? So there's hypocrisy and a double
standard.